History Facts
Facts | Events
| Payment Cards: Payment cards are paper based instruments which were introduced in 1933. |
| Black Thurday: : Black Thursday was the first sign of the end of a great bull market. 12.9 million shares changed hands that day (4m shares was considered a busy day back then). Most of the panic started in the morning. The ticker tape machine fell behind by an hour and a half leaving investors madly scrambling to sell their investments without knowing the current prices. Panic set in. People gathered outside the exchanges and brokerages, police were dispatched to insure peace. Rumors were flying. By 12:30 pm, the Chicago and Buffalo Exchanges closed down, eleven well-known speculators had already committed suicide and the NYSE closed the visitor�s gallery on the wild scenes below. The market moved up a bit afterwards, but the real recovery came at 1:30 pm, when self-confident Richard Whitney, vice-president of the NYSE and floor broker of J.P. Morgan and Company, walked into the exchange floor. The crowd went silent. Everyone expected an announcement that the NYSE would be closed. Instead, Richard Whitney surprised everybody by buying 10,000 shares of U.S. Steel (Bid at 109) at 205. He immediately received 200 shares and then left the rest of the order with the specialist. He continued to make similar orders for over a dozen more stocks. Fear evaporated as investors became worried that they would miss the new boom. Black Thursday was the worst day in the US stock market and the beginning of the Great Crash of 1929. |
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